Z3 Readers, get out your wallet or your search engine

Murdoch to Charge for All Newspaper Sites

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. has had a tough time making money this year, but Murdoch has a solution for the company's woes: online content protection and paywalls, which allow only paid subscribers to access certain content on a Web site.

News Corp yesterday reported its profits were down 8 percent this year compared to fiscal year 2008. In a press release, Murdoch said 2009 was "the most difficult [year] in recent history" for the company. To slow the financial bleeding, Murdoch has decided that all of News Corp's newspaper sites will institute a paywall by next summer, according to the Guardian.

Echoing the sentiment "content isn't free," Murdoch yesterday told reporters during News Corp's earnings call that all of the company's newspaper properties would model their paywalls after the structure currently in place on The Wall Street Journal's Web site, according to tweets from Paid Content's Staci D Kramer.

The paywall at WSJ.com is often seen as the most successful model of its kind in the news business. The online version of the WSJ features a mix of freely available content, with certain premium articles -- mostly financial news -- available only to paid subscribers. Since News Corp owns many popular newspapers around the world, it's likely Murdoch's decision will have a ripple effect across the newspaper industry. The News Corp media empire contains some of the biggest newspaper properties in the world including The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post, as well as the U.K.-based papers The Times and News of the World.

Before Murdoch's statements, The New York Times was already thinking about reviving its own paywall -- even though its previous paywall models were relatively unsuccessful. And in May of this year, newspaper executives from across the country met in Chicago to discuss the fate of their industry. The common theme at the meeting was that most newspapers would eventually start charging for some online content in an attempt to earn some money online, according to the Atlantic.

During the earnings call Murdoch also said that once News Corp properties start charging for content, the media company will move to aggressively protect its copyrighted content. The Associated Press recently announced a similar content-protection policy. The AP intends to use a piece of software to monitor where its news content appears online, and then attempt to charge money to third-party Web sites that overuse its content.

But Will Charging for News Work?

The problem with paywalls is that these models have been unsuccessful in the past. Many newspapers have done away with this system in recent years opting for ad-supported Web sites; however, Web advertising has not been able to make up for lost revenue from its physical newspaper product. So far, the only response newspapers can think of to stem the tide of lost dollars is to charge for their content.

But will customers be willing to pay for content they are used to getting for free? I think it's possible, but it depends on how much newspaper content ends up behind paywalls.

The other question is whether newspapers would allow the common trick of using Google to get around the WSJ paywall. When you want to read something on WSJ.com that's behind its paywall, all you have to do is copy the headline, plug it into Google and follow Google's link to read the complete article for free. The WSJ allows this loophole so it can grow its readership, and the paper probably hopes some of those free readers will subscribe in the future. Since Google helps to increase WSJ readership, the Google loophole is likely to remain in place and could become a trend at least for News Corp sites. But if that's the case, I wonder whether readers will be willing to fork over subscription fees, or whether the "Googlewashing" technique to keep on getting free content will become a common tactic among online readers.

What do you say? Are you willing to pay for content or is the newspaper industry headed down the wrong path?

CIA’s ‘Black’ Helicopters Land in Court

Sharon Weinberger is the author of "A Nuclear Family Vacation" (Bloomsbury).

[Photo: U.S. Air Force. The photograph, taken in March 2002, shows a CIA helicopter in Afghanistan. The tail number is traceable back to Maverick Aviation.]

More than seven years ago a group of Americans traveled to Siberia to buy a pair of Russian Mi-17 helicopters for the CIA’s post-9/11 clandestine operations in Afghanistan. As with many “black” programs, the contract had elements of craziness:

Contracting officials paid the multimillion-dollar contract on a credit card at a local El Paso bar and then used the credit card rebate to redecorate their office; the team traveled under the guise of being private contractors; and the charter crew transporting the group abandoned the team in Russia in the middle of the night.

Ultimately, a five-year investigation into the mission led to the conviction of the Army official in charge and the contractor who bought the helicopters on charges of corruption. The two men, currently in federal prison, are appealing their convictions.

At first glance, it’s a simple case: A few days after returning from Russia, the contractor paid off the second mortgage of the Army official in charge of the mission. Prosecutors argued that the contractor, Maverick Aviation, was unprepared for the mission, and the Army official helped cover up the problems in exchange for a payoff. The defendants at trial were barred from mentioning the CIA, Afghanistan or even 9/11.

In an article for The New York Post, this author looks at what really happened in Siberia based on over two dozen interviews with people involved in the mission and trial. It’s a story, that in some respects, is very different than the portrait painted by the government at trial.

One interesting comparison not mentioned in the article is worth noting in light of recent purchases of Russian helicopters: In 2001, Maverick Aviation was paid $5 million for two freshly overhauled Mi-17s and spare parts, as well as travel and logistics for team of Army/CIA personnel, and got the helicopters out of Russia in under 30 days. In 2008, ARINC, a major U.S. defense contractor, was paid $322 million dollars to buy 22 Russian helicopters under a U.S. foreign military sales contract.

Guess how many helicopters ARINC has delivered to Iraq after 18 months? Zero.

On Dec. 4, 2001, five members of a Las Vegas-based charter crew were detained by Russian authorities after they landed without visas in Petropavlovsk. The remote Russian city, located on the Kamchatka peninsula and surrounded by active volcanoes, is nine time zones east of Moscow and cannot be reached by road.

Three days earlier, the privately owned Boeing 737 had left Biggs Army Airfield in Texas, carrying the crew and 16 Americans traveling on tourist visas. The plane, a luxury aircraft outfitted with wood paneling and a three-hole putting green, had been chartered by a small company from Enterprise, Alabama, called Maverick Aviation.

What the plane and its passengers were really doing in Russia in the middle of winter is only hinted at in an appeal filed by two federal prisoners this year. But interviews with those involved in the case reveal a secretive, and sometimes comical, mission to strike back at the Taliban after 9/11 -- a rare glimpse into the CIA's efforts in Afghanistan.

According to unclassified court documents, the group was traveling to a helicopter plant in Siberia, where Maverick Aviation, which was experienced in acquiring Russian aircraft for the US military, was planning to buy two helicopters for a "customer."

The CIA needed Russian helicopters because of its clandestine operations in Afghanistan. On Sept. 24, 2001, a Russian-made helicopter loaded with $10 million in cash carried a small CIA team into Afghanistan's Panjshir Valley. Code-named "Jawbreaker," the mission was to cement support among tribal leaders and pave the way for US military operations. It was the first entry of Americans into Afghanistan after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.

The aging helicopter, an Mi-17, was the team's only way of getting in or out of the country. Though hardly state-of-the-art, the Russian helicopter had a distinct advantage for the CIA: it allowed the agency to operate relatively unnoticed in an area where Russian equipment left over from the Soviet occupation was commonplace.

There was only one problem: The CIA owned only one Russian helicopter. It needed more, but a clandestine American agency couldn't exactly pick up the phone and call a Russian factory. So it turned to Jeffrey Stayton, then the chief of the Aviation Division at the US Army Test and Evaluation Command and an expert in Russian copters.

Stayton's plan was to find a private American company to buy the helicopters, send a team of people over to pick them up from a plant in Siberia, modify them to CIA standards, and then get them to Uzbekistan, a staging ground for CIA operations into Afghanistan. And they would do it all within a matter of weeks.

Eventually, the team included William "Curt" Childree, whose company, Maverick Aviation, won the contract to buy the helicopters and organize logistics; Army personnel and contractors from El Paso with experience modifying Russian aircraft for use by the US military; and then "six guys from the customer's office," as Stayton put it (a CIA team that included special operations personnel).

That's when things started to get complicated.

*

In an interview, the pilot, Fred Sorenson, said he thought visas they had ordered would arrive by FedEx by the time the plane landed. When he found out over satellite phone that the papers hadn't arrived, the plane was already descending, so he hid the fact from the crew for fear of a cockpit argument. The team was detained on arrival.

In the end, the visas came, and the crew was released the next day. But when the plane finally made it to Ulan Ude, in Siberia, the crew and passengers faced more challenges. To say merely that it was cold does not capture the Siberian winter, where temperatures that month approached 30 degrees below zero. Even worse, the team was in a Russian hotel with spotty electricity and limited heat.

The charter crew was shocked at the conditions (Siberia, after all, was off the beaten track of their typical VIP clients), but the Army personnel from El Paso also seemed woefully unprepared. None of them had ever been to Russia before -- some had never left Texas -- and the rough conditions shocked them. "I had the sense that I might end up in a Russian jail," Kimberly Boone, a Russian translator for the Army, later recounted in court testimony.

Several members of the team grew sick with flu-like symptoms. There was also a major hitch with the helicopters. According to the factory, there was the equivalent of a mechanic's lien on the helicopters, and they couldn't be released. While Stayton and Childree attempted to negotiate the release from the factory, the Army personnel were told to act like tourists on a winter getaway to Siberia: They visited a Buddhist monastery and shopped for fur coats.

Childree, by then suffering from pneumonia, flew to Moscow to meet with the broker, where he found that a competitor (no one knows for sure who) had apparently offered $30,000 to kill the deal.

After some heated discussions, the helicopters, which cost about $1.6 million each, were released.

Back in Siberia, meanwhile, Stayton was having problems with Brian Patterson, the Army warrant officer in charge of the El Paso team, who, according to multiple people on the trip, was drinking heavily.

Lisa Teuton, a flight attendant for the charter company, recalled several members of the El Paso team drinking and bragging about their work for the CIA. "It just blew me away," said Teuton. "I thought they would have been more professional and more secretive."

The charter crew, fed up with the delays and the conditions, threatened to leave, but the El Paso team was having none of it. According to Sorenson, chief warrant officer Patterson poked him in the shoulder and said: 'If you leave, we'll shoot you down.' "

Patterson laughed when asked about the incident. "I would like to know how I could accomplish that," he said.

That night, while the others were settled in their rooms, the crew surreptitiously checked out of the hotel. They used some of their remaining cash and alcohol to bribe airport personnel not to notify the Army of their departure. With no cash left for additional fuel, and no clearance to fly over China, the aircraft headed toward Japan, as the flight attendants kept watch out the windows to see if they really would be shot down.

*

The real question was: Did anyone not know it was a CIA trip? The CIA team had traveled under the amusingly obvious cover name of Donovan Aerial Surveys (William "Wild Bill" Donovan is regarded as the father of the CIA). The Russians in Ulan Ude were wondering what a group of private Americans were doing in Siberia in the middle of winter buying helicopters.

"They were very curious the whole time [about] why we were there; they would ask questions: 'What are you doing?' " Joe Perry, a master sergeant on the mission, recalled. "Our rooms were bugged . . . It was just unreal some of the things they were doing."

Relations with the Army team had been bad from the start. Stayton was unhappy with many of them, and the CIA considered them a nuisance. After one final argument, Stayton informed the Army's Patterson that his team was going home immediately on commercial flights. The CIA team would finish the work on the helicopters.

Less than a week later, the two helicopters were packed in an Antonov cargo plane. When Stayton and the CIA personnel left Russia on the evening of Dec. 31, 2001, they had just 30 minutes left on their visas.

From the perspective of the CIA, the mission to Siberia, whatever its quirks, was a success. But the contract, which was administered by Army officials in New Mexico unaware of CIA involvement, quickly attracted scrutiny from the Army Criminal Investigative Division.

Agents found some unusual things. For instance, Army officials paid the most of the $5 million contract in a credit card transaction in an El Paso bar called the "Cockpit Lounge." More troubling, the file was missing signatures; included few of the required supporting documents; and no invoices. When asked by investigators to explain why he allowed so many irregularities to go unnoticed, Edwin Guthrie, the contracting officer, responded: "Sleep apnea."

There were other strange aspects, all related to the CIA's secret involvement. Money allotted to pay expenses associated with mystery "subcontractors" (CIA personnel traveling under fictitious names); helicopters bought by the military being given civilian registration numbers (another quirk of CIA aircraft); and large cash transactions (typical of Russia). "They, the government, really leaned on me," said Childree, noting that provisions, such as support for the CIA personnel, were added on to the contract at the last minute.

Investigators also focused on all the problems that took place on the trip, which the El Paso team blamed on Maverick Aviation and Stayton. "It was a nightmare," recounted Boone, the Russian translator (it was Boone's first trip to Russia).

But John Wilson, whose company also competed for the helicopter contract and was interviewed by law enforcement officials, was surprised that anyone thought the problems were a big deal. Buying helicopters in Russia isn't easy. "I sat there going: Is that all?" he said. "That's a good trip; I mean, really, honestly and truthfully, that was a pretty good trip as far as normal stuff goes."

*

In December 2007, six years after the mission to Siberia, Army official Stayton and private contractor Childree went to trial in the Middle District of Alabama on charges of defrauding the government.

A five-year investigation into the mission that spanned from Ulan Ude to Enterprise revealed that just days after returning from the mission to Russia, Childree wired money from his bank account to pay off Stayton's second mortgage -- about $61,000.

Both Stayton and Childree maintain the payment was a loan between two friends of 30 years, and had nothing do with the contract. But Stayton never listed the financial relationship on a government disclosure form, and other than a thank-you note to Childree, the two men never memorialized the loan in any paperwork. Government prosecutors argued the problems on the mission were the result of Maverick Aviation's lack of planning. The payment was not a loan, they said, but a payoff made so that Stayton would steer the contract to Childree's company (although Maverick had the lowest price of three bidders) and to cover up his poor performance.

Complicating matters, the judge ruled that no classified information could be used at trial: no mention of the CIA, Afghanistan, or even "9/11."

While acquitted of bribery, both men were convicted of fraud, and Stayton was found guilty of the additional charge of obstruction of justice. Both Childree and Stayton, who are appealing their conviction, believe that if the jury had known the real purpose of the helicopters, they would have understood the seemingly strange parts of the mission were not a cover up.

Childree, now 70, is scheduled to be released from prison next year; Stayton, 59, won't be released until 2012. Both have been diagnosed with cancer and are receiving treatment in prison medical facilities.

Secrecy still has a weird effect on the case: Stayton, in interviews, won't use the name "CIA" when referring to the mission, even though the agency, for its part, treats its "secret" Mi-17s as an inside joke. The first Russian helicopter in Afghanistan was painted with the fictitious tail number 91101 -- a reference to the 9/11 attacks.

What never came out at trial was the crucial role the Mi-17s played in the early months of military operations, when they were used to transport and resupply CIA paramilitary teams in Afghanistan. One picture taken during Operation Anaconda in March 2002 shows one of the CIA aircraft bought by Maverick being used by special operations personnel to transport a wounded Northern Alliance member. Though widely available, the picture was classified by the government at trial.

In response to questions about the CIA's involvement in the mission to Siberia and its procurement of Mi-17 helicopters, George Little, a CIA spokesman, replied: "The CIA does not, as a rule, comment one way or the other on allegations regarding the agency's contractual relationships."

Hello Z3 Readers...the right to bear arms proves its self in this story from NY that I found on this link here where I hear my favorite survivalist info podcasts: http://www.thesurvivalpodcast.com/

Aug 15, 2:01 PM EDT

NY shopkeeper who defended store recounts shooting

By VERENA DOBNIK Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK (AP) -- The sidewalk outside the Harlem store still was smeared with blood Friday, and the glass on the door still was blown out.

Above the entrance, someone had scribbled the words, "Abandon hope all ye who enter here."

Less than 24 hours after a deadly showdown at the shop worthy of a Clint Eastwood script, Charles "Gus" Augusto Jr. entered his store - oblivious of the inscription taken from Dante's "Inferno."

The 72-year-old wholesaler of commercial restaurant equipment had been up all night, questioned by police about how he'd drawn a shotgun and killed two of four armed robbery suspects who entered his Kaplan Brothers Blue Flame store Thursday afternoon.

Two of the young men died on the street. Two remained hospitalized in stable condition with gunshot wounds.

When they walked in at about 3 p.m. and confronted Augusto with guns, "I didn't want to shoot them," he said, sitting bleary-eyed in his dusty, windowless warehouse, with a fly swatter hanging above his head.

He said the bandits drew their handguns, yelling, "Where's the money? Where's the money?"

They pistol-whipped a worker and waved a weapon at a cashier's face, he said.

"There is no money," Augusto said he told them. "Go home."

Stashed away nearby was the 12-gauge shotgun he bought decades ago and said he had never used since a test-fire. He reached for it when he sensed one of the men was about to shoot, and pulled the trigger once.

"I hoped after the first shot they would go away," he said.

When they didn't, continuing to menace his employees, he fired again, and again.

Police said one of the men collapsed and died outside the door, just feet from a Baptist church.

"He died in the hands of God," said a neighborhood resident, Vincent Gayle, pointing to the blood-spattered pavement by the church. "But what goes around comes around."

Another fatally wounded suspect managed to cross the street, leaving a trail of blood before he collapsed. He was later pronounced dead at the hospital, police said.

More blood led police to the other two suspects, who were arrested and taken to the hospital. Charges against them were pending.

Police said Augusto didn't have a required permit for the weapon used in the headline-grabbing shooting the Daily News called a "Pump-Action Ending."

But he was a victim, police said, and no charges had been filed on Friday.

"I'd rather not have done it," Augusto said, "and I'm sad for those mothers who have no sons."

On Friday, pedestrians were still sidestepping pools of blood along Augusto's block on West 125th Street, a short walk from Bill Clinton's Harlem office.

Reactions to the shooting were mixed.

Frida Rodriguez called it "a sad day" for the neighborhood.

Augusto "was defending his work, his business, so you could perceive that as being heroic," she said. "But on the other hand, these kids died."

The shopkeeper was coy when asked whether, with his shotgun confiscated, he had a backup.

PeaceworkerMood: lyricalNow Playing: working for a livingTopic: SMILE SMILE SMILEApeaceworker is an individual or member of an organization that undertakes to resolve violent conflict, prevent the rise of new violent conflicts, and rebuild societies damaged by war.

The term peaceworker is usually reserved for civilian, unarmed members of non-governmental organizations.

Days ago, under the headline "White House Struggles to Gauge Afghan Success," a New York Times story made a splash. "As the American military comes to full strength in the Afghan buildup, the Obama administration is struggling to come up with a long-promised plan to measure whether the war is being won."

Don’t ask the dead. They don’t count.

The Times article went on: "Those ‘metrics’ of success, demanded by Congress and eagerly awaited by the military, are seen as crucial if the president is to convince Capitol Hill and the country that his revamped strategy is working."

Don’t ask the dead. They won’t have a say.

"Without concrete signs of progress, Mr. Obama may lack the political stock — especially among Democrats and his liberal base — to make the case for continuing the military effort or enlarging the American presence."

Don’t ask the dead. They can’t hear you.

"We all share the president’s goal of succeeding in Afghanistan," said Senator John Kerry. "The challenge here is how we are going to define success in the medium term, given the difficult security environment we face."

Don’t ask the dead. You can’t hear them.

The White House "struggles to gauge Afghan success." People in the middle of the Afghan war struggle to survive.

A new ceiling of 68,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan hasn’t been reached yet, but leaks are now telling us that the Pentagon’s top commander there will soon request 45,000 more. Apparently, escalating the warfare is much more attractive to Washington’s policymakers than actually challenging the main supporters of the Taliban in Afghanistan — the Pakistani government.

"With the U.S. relationship with Pakistan still locked in a cold war embrace that accedes to Pakistani demands at the expense of Afghanistan, establishing a metric for anything is useless without reassessing the underlying assumptions," Elizabeth Gould and Paul Fitzgerald said last week. They’re authors of the new book Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story, published after nearly 30 years of research.

"With Pakistan’s creation of the Taliban, America’s concept of ‘winning’ entered a complicated phase that continues to haunt American decision-making to its core," Gould and Fitzgerald added. "Pakistani intelligence knows full well the American political system, its history of compliance with their wishes and the lack of appreciation for Afghan independence. America’s war in Afghanistan is an ongoing bait and switch where the U.S. fights against its own interests and Pakistan plays the Beltway like a violin."

Gould and Fitzgerald contend: "The only metric that matters is how far Pakistan’s military has moved from supporting Islamic extremism. With the insider relationship the United States has with Pakistan’s military intelligence, that should not be a difficult metric to establish."

Meanwhile, few Democrats with high profiles can bring themselves to challenge President Obama’s military escalation in Afghanistan. But an important statement has just come from John Burton, chairman of the California Democratic Party.

"Enough is enough," Burton wrote in an August 11 email blast that went to party activists statewide. "It’s time we learned the lessons of history. The British Empire, the most powerful empire in the world, could not subdue Afghanistan. Neither could the Soviet Union, the second most powerful country at that time and next-door neighbor to Afghanistan. Two of the great militaries in history found Afghanistan easy to conquer but impossible to hold. It’s time the people of Afghanistan assumed full control of their own country. It’s time for American troops to come home — not only from Iraq, but from Afghanistan too. And the first step is an exit strategy."

Burton made a key connection between the soaring costs of the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan and the domestic economy: "Already, $223 billion that could have gone to things like health care reform has been sunk into this war. . ."

Routinely, the dominant political and media calculus renders the dead as digits and widgets, moved around on spreadsheets and news pages. The victims of war are hardly seen as people by the numbed sophisticates who can measure just about anything but the value of a human life.

Fish and Fish Oil Linked to Diabetes RiskMood: not sureNow Playing: A new Harvard study in the American Journal of Clinical NutritionTopic: ENVIRONMENTAL

Fish and Fish Oil Linked to Diabetes Risk

posted 8/14/09

A new Harvard study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition links fish and omega-3 oil consumption to type 2 diabetes. Following 195,204 adults for 14 to18 years, researchers found that the more fish or omega-3 fatty acids participants consumed, the higher their risk of developing diabetes. The risk increase was modest for occasional fish eaters, but rose to a 22 percent increased risk for women consuming five or more fish servings per week.

Prior studies have suggested that fat accumulation within muscle cells can lead to insulin resistance which, in turn, contributes to diabetes. People who eat no animal products have less fat in their cells and much less risk of developing diabetes. A low-fat vegan diet has been shown to improve type 2 diabetes.

Insitu, a local drone developer now owned by Boeing, has approached the city as a part of a public relations campaign to develop public support for its operations. Since Boeing/Insitu has initiated this discussion, residents may want to carefully consider the true nature of what it is designed to do for the U.S. military.

Insitu drones were developed to track moving targets on the ground. Early Insitu scientists had hoped to develop a product that would track fish schools for the kill, but found a limited market. Instead, its drones will probably be used directly or indirectly to track humans for the kill, as well as for simple surveillance.

Boeing/Insitu now choose to emphasize reconnaissance, not the targeting assistance, but their development history shows that both are intended. A development report dated April 14, 2005 and then posted on Insitu’s website described testing of its drone ScanEagle at White Sands Missile Range: The drone “ . . . provided . . . targeting support and [was] used to derive targeting information for the delivery of an ATAC missile and JDAM missile.”

According to the website, in March and June of 2004, the ScanEagle flew with a larger Predator drone – which is not made by Insitu, but which is armed and used in assassination missions -- during tests of “hand-off strategies” with the Predator as they “prosecute targets.” Preliminary results indicated “that ScanEagle was among the quickest for target acquisition and most accurate for target location designation.”

Insitu drones have now been used by the U.S. Marines, Navy and Air Force and in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The Boeing/Insitu website is no longer so frank.

From miles on high there is no way for a drone to project exactly who the human beings inside targeted buildings or vehicles might be. Many are individuals who die tragically in a crossfire not of their making. Inevitable targeting mistakes have already created more enemies for the U.S. in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan, whose citizens refuse to consider their lost family members merely “collateral damage.”

Drones facilitate arm’s-length killing with no risk to the killer. Warfare without apparent cost can result in warfare without thought. It makes it easy for us to think we can occupy a foreign country and then savage our opposition and assassinate inconvenient local leaders – all by manipulating a computer joystick many miles away.

Moreover, it’s now assumed that the U.S. government can execute targeted assassinations of foreign citizens without benefit of any judicial process, an idea that would have been unthinkable just a decade ago and violates norms of international law. An official acknowledged this week that 367 people are now on the U.S. military’s kill list (New York Times, 8/10/09).

This is all done in our name, and Boeing/Insitu has an important role in it. Do we want to accept this with our silence? We already pay for it with our tax dollars.

We might take the lead of Insitu founder Tad McGeer, who left the company in part out of discomfort with its growing military focus. If Boeing/Insitu is asking for an endorsement of that kind of development in our communities, before we take their 30 pieces of silver, we might at least have an informed discussion of the role they play in forming the world our children will inherit.

Susan Garrett Crowley is a retired Hood River attorney and former mediator.

My cousinj Ted WesthusingMood: downNow Playing: What is the message ... What is the mission?Topic: WAR28 November 2005 21:23 PST | Posted by Joe Anybody

How is honor possible in a war like the one in Iraq?"He was sick of money-grubbing contractors," the official recounted. Westhusing said that "he had not come over to Iraq for this."

.....Hey Joe!I turn around and say....."Yaa!?"

I heard it on the grapevine (Iternet site) HEREThat your Cousin in the Iraq War, his Death is on a main thread"me ...? joe-anybody USA cousin Dead in Iraq?Well that could be any 2,000 or more of us ....did he mean my cousin?"

Most of the letter is a wrenching account of a struggle for honor in a strange land.

[This original post from Joe Anybody was in the Zebera 3 Report from 2005]

"I cannot support a msn (mission) that leads to corruption, human rights abuse and liars. I am sullied," it says. "I came to serve honorably and feel dishonored."Death before being dishonored any more."

Westhusing struggled with the idea that monetary values could outweigh moral ones in war. At least thats what a psychologist is saying?

Listen to this NPR short interview with T Christian Miller from the Los Angles Times --Right Here!